There are 25 days left in the William Nylander free agent game of chicken, and no signs yet of anyone blinking.

What there are signs of — and they are in direct contrast with each other — is how disinterested the Leafs continue to play at home, how much they could use what the skill Nylander brings, and yet at the same time, how Nylander’s place on the team is actually diminishing.

This is where the negotiation gets complicated.

Injured or not, Auston Matthews is the Leafs’ most indispensable player. There is no doubt about that anymore. Around the National Hockey League, scouts and general managers have been amazed at how much he has grown his game in his third season. If there’s a ranking of any kind, he ranks as the Leafs’ best player and the future captain.

By dollars alone, and by the completeness of his game, particularly on the road, John Tavares would rank second on the list of the Leafs’ Top 5. But he’s not a whole lot ahead of Mitch Marner, who, like Matthews, has elevated his play to another level. What he does almost every game is make plays others cannot make. He sees people others cannot see. He finds space others can’t make for themselves.

In the words of Mike Babcock, Marner can drive a line and so many nights this season, even in the less-sterling team performance of Tuesday night against a shorthanded Vegas team, he has driven his line, setting up Tavares more often than Tavares has set him up.

After that, Morgan Rielly checks in as the fourth-most important Leaf. Like Matthews, like Marner, he, too, has found a new level this season. There is yet another level for him to reach, but offensively he is already showing a new level of offence and certainly a new level with the man advantage.

It might be slighting Freddie Andersen to call him the fifth best Leaf. It probably is. He has been great in goal on many nights the Leafs have not been great at all without the puck. Tuesday night against Vegas, he got some luck from the goal posts — Vegas banged puck off the posts three times — but some of that comes because he’s so positionally solid in goal. Or, as an NHL voice said before the game Tuesday night, he has grown into a game-changing goaltender.

So to recap: The Leafs have a game-changer in Matthews, an everything type of centre in Tavares, a game-changer in Marner, an it’s-still-early-but-maybe Norris Trophy candidate in Rielly and the better-than-solid Andersen in goal.

How much should a team be expected to pay for its sixth-best player?

This is something Leafs management has to be discussing and debating every day. You can’t go too high for your sixth-best player.

The sixth highest-paid player on the Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals is T.J. Oshie. His salary is $5.5 million.

The sixth highest-paid player on Pittsburgh, which won the previous two Stanley Cups, is Derick Brassard. He makes $5 million a year.

The Leafs payroll is about to change drastically, with or without Nylander. Matthews will get more money than anyone on Washington or Pittsburgh. Tavares is already well beyond Alex Ovechkin or Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin in salary.

Marner will be able to demand just about whatever he wants and the Leafs have no choice but to pay him. The Leafs are fortunate to have Rielly signed long-term for reasonable numbers and have Andersen on board for at least two more seasons at Pekka Rinne numbers.

General manager Kyle Dubas has offered Nylander the kind of money that is beyond what you pay a player not in your top five. Maybe he sees Nylander is a higher position up the roster than others have. Whatever he’s doing, whatever he’s attempting, he’s not saying. The Nylander ask from the beginning has been more about his natural talents and less about what where he might fit in on the Toronto roster.

Nobody in the NHL is paying $7 million or more to its fifth-best player. The salary cap basically doesn’t allow room for that. By the assumption of where Nylander fits with the Leafs — a year ago, heading into the season, he was considered more advanced than Marner. By the end of last season, especially after the playoffs, that narrative has changed. And it has changed even more as Marner has jumped a level this year while Nylander, who had a poor playoff against Boston, waits in Sweden for some kind of contract resolution.

It does no one any good to let this go to the deadline date of December 1. Both Nylander and the Leafs lose in that scenario.

And it’s time for Dubas, the rookie general manager, to make a deal of some kind. With so many factors still challenging the outcome and time running out.

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